Nine of the top 10 retailers have m-commerce covered

Nine of the top 10 retailers have mobile commerce sites and/or apps, while only 67% of another 85 merchants are engaged in m-commerce, according to a new study by retail systems provider CrossView.

All top 10 retailers with mobile sites and/or apps offer ratings and reviews compared with 57% of the remaining retailers in the survey. And seven of the top 10 retailers enable order on mobile/pick-up in-store compared with only 16% of the remaining merchants.

The top 10 retailers, based on sales estimates from research firm Hoovers, are Apple Inc., Best Buy Co. Inc., Home Depot Inc., Lowe’s Inc., Macy’s Inc., Sears Holdings Corp., Staples Inc., Target Corp., Walgreen Co. and Walmart.com. Apple is the merchant that does not offer an m-commerce site or mobile app for its core computing business.

All top 10 retailers displayed the same price for merchandise in their web stores and mobile sites. Of the remaining retailers, 74% had the same pricing. Eight of the top 10 retailers displayed the same prices on the mobile site versus the physical store compared with 66% of the remaining retailers.

Eight of the top 10 retailers allow customers to use their mobile devices to see if products are in-stock at a particular store location while only 16% of remaining retailers enable this function. And nine of the top 10 retailers display sales and marketing promotions on their mobile sites while 56% of remaining retailers offer such promotions.

“Many retailers are approaching mobile commerce in a successful way, but CrossView’s study highlights opportunities that also exist in the marketplace,” says Jason Goldberg, vice president of strategy and customer experience. “Retailers can implement remedies without huge investment. The key is to avoid thinking of mobile as a separate channel, but rather an extension of other touch-points that can help retailers enable their customers to leverage the strengths associated with mobile technology.”